Maple syrup: natural and sweet. Just like our kids.

I’ll say up front that I don’t like fake maple syrup. And not only because it doesn’t contain any maple. (Most brands are a mix of high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives and artificial flavors.) It’s because maple syrup is perfect just the way it is. Naturally sweet, it also contains trace vitamins and minerals. A study released this week even found beneficial antioxidants. It’s still a sugar, so let’s not go crazy. But for pancakes or baking, or drizzling over oatmeal or plain yogurt, it can’t be beat.

Great lore, too: Legend has it that a Native American woman brewed up the first batch accidentally. Her husband, heading off to hunt one morning, yanked his tomahawk from the tree where he’d thrown it the night before. Sap ran from the cut and into a container at the base of the tree. The woman found the liquid, thought it was water, cooked in it and got a sweet surprise.

Over time the inevitable happened, and someone got the bright idea to make an imitation of the real thing. Cost and availability were certainly factors, but at least early versions contained some actual maple syrup. So all of us who grew up with syrup bottles shaped like grandma were closer to the real thing than we are now.

I let my daughter taste the imposter in a restaurant once, because I wanted her to understand the difference, and thankfully she wrinkled her nose and went for the good stuff. (Food nerd alert: Yes, I bring my own bottle of maple syrup if we’re going out for breakfast. It’s just what I do.)

But even kids who haven’t grown up with real maple syrup can learn to appreciate it. And one way I guarantee you’ll get their interest is at a maple sugaring event.

Sap on tap

We’re fortunate in western New York to have Genesee Country Village & Museum, a living-history museum that also has a nature center. So we get syrup with a side of history. But you can find maple events throughout northeast North America. (Here’s a shortcut for my fellow New Yorkers.) If you live elsewhere, but your region has maple trees and cooperative weather, it’s likely you can find maple events near you, too. Hurry, though — the season wraps up around the end of March.

At a maple sugaring outing this past weekend, Tess and her best buddy sampled sap straight from the tree (it tastes like sweetish water), as well as syrup from maple, birch and shagbark hickory trees (the last one is made from boiling down the bark, not the sap). They had maple-glazed walnuts and maple snow cones (syrup over shaved ice). We did skip the maple cotton candy, though (even if the cotton candy machine was invented in 1897).

But the best part was the sugaring camp set up to show how early settlers collected, transported and cooked down the sap — techniques that haven’t changed a whole lot in the last few centuries. The equipment is better, operations are bigger, but the end result is pretty much the same. So the girls got a small-scale, up-close view of sap boiled down to syrup, boiled further still to maple cream, and further still to maple sugar. Forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. No wonder real maple syrup is expensive. But so worth it.

Have you visited a sugaring event? Tapped your own trees? Tell me about your maple adventures.

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26 Comments

Sharon Waldrop
on March 25, 2010 at 1:35 pm

You have me convinced that we need to try the real stuff! I love that you bring your own bottle of pure maple syrup with you when you go out for breakfast! A bowl of hot oatmeal with roasted pecans and drizzled with pure maple syrup sounds good right about now.

My mother and father make maple syrup right in a little shack to the side of their home in Upstate NY. It’s been a tradition sort of passed down from my mother’s side. I grew up not knowing an imitation and until I went away to college, I had no idea what one even tasted like! It’s not comparable. As a kid I was always the helper from tapping trees to hand bottling the syrup [ taste tester, too :o) ]. My mom jokes that someone had to go pull my dad from the sugar bush when she was in labor for me and 3 years later…my sister (March babies!). lol

The maple cotton candy at Genesee Country Village last weekend was really awesome and tasted like it was made with much more maple sugar than the other places where we have tried it- the Pennsylvania State Farm Show in Harrisburg and a wonderful restaurant in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario called the Stone Road Grill. This is absolutely the only type of cotton candy my kids are allowed to have so it is a really special treat. Even though it is usually made with part white sugar and part granulated maple sugar to give it the flavor at least it doesn’t have the artificial color of the standard varieties. If I ever have access to a cotton candy maker I’m going to splurge and make it with 100% maple sugar- at $10-$12 per pound for the sugar it will be a pricey treat but worth it!

Oh, and I am so excited about the URI study you mention since we regularly use small amounts of maple syrup to sweeten our homemade yogurt and apple sauce and our steel-cut oatmeal that cooks in the crock pot overnight! I knew it was good stuff, but the study shows it is even better than we knew! Here in Rochester we find that the best price on maple syrup is to buy gallon jugs at the Public Market.

Love your posts! We have been to the Genesee Country Village & Museum and enjoyed the tour and the demo of the maple sugaring along with the boiling kettles. The kids were unsure at first and then tasted and loved it. I remember having that a-ha moment like – wow, this is yummy, this is what it’s supposed to taste like? what the heck have I been eating? I also love the quiet, serene nature of the nature center. I swear I took the exact same picture of that exact same tree and bucket.

I agree w/ Pamela. I took my class there for a field study. (We are learning about early communities.) We tried the maple cotton candy. All I can say……..YUUUUMMMOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! They made it right in front of us with pure mape sugar. SOOOOO tastey!

I bring my own syrup when we go out TOO!!! Yay!!! Go to the Maple Tree Inn! they have the best buckwheat pancakes and other yummy breakfast and lunch food too. But this family owned business is only open until April 11th, so get those hotcakes while their hot!

Christina,
I love your blog! I’m going to be a regular reader. We love maple syrup and packed the boat with 8 litres in the hope it will get us to the South Pacific. When it runs out we’ll have to make do with local honey…
Diane

Btw- In the stack of Micheal Pollan books my ed sent me, there is a new one aimed at kids (well, it’s the Omnivores Dilema with a kid focus). I’ve started going through it and plan to go through it with Maia. Have you seen it yet?
-Diane

Thank you all for your nice comments on Sap, Syrup, and Sugar at GCV&M. We enjoy doing it as much as you do seeing it. It is a lot of work but also a lot of fun. There is nothing like the real thing! Well, back to the sugar camp!

Hi Chris and others – There is nothing like honest-to-goodness maple syrup! Our nature center in Irondequoit, NY, had its annual Maple Sugar Festival last weekend too. We’ve become regulars at the festival ever since we moved here a few years ago. My boys and I love going each year and helping to haul buckets of sap from the trees back to the “sugar shack.” And we marvel at how it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of delicious syrup.

Yum, maple syrup! I cannot bear the fake crap out there. Even though maple syrup is sweet, there are so many layers of flavor—so much to taste and enjoy! The fake stuff is just, well…sweet and nothing else. Ew. It’s the flavor of real maple syrup that I adore. Each batch is different. There’s so much you can do with that flavor that the fake stuff couldn’t possibly do. It tastes like the woods and fire and the snow. I love it.

If we go out and want pancakes, I always ask if they use real maple syrup. If not, we skip it and order something else. Why didn’t I think to carry my own mini bottle?! I will *now*!

And I imagine the cotton candy from maple sugar wouldn’t actually use that much. The machines spin a small amount into mounds of flossy fun. I’m getting a machine soon, so I will definitely try it!

My husband and I only eat pure maple syrup now. We love it! It’s so funny that we used to eat the fake syrup and thought it was good. Once we started eating only the real stuff, we can not stomach the fake chemical taste of the imitation “pretend” syrup. Thanks for sharing!

Adding a teaspoon or two of (real, of course) maple syrup and molasses to food improves the mineralization of the food, much as if the produce was higher quality. It also brings out the natural flavors of the food. I know a family that started enjoying lentils when they tried this.

Where sugar appears in nature, good mineral content is there too. Where sugar is lower than it should be, mineralization will be poor.

I went to high school in Texas (but im not from there) and I decided to go to Bennington College (in Vermont). Along with my welcome letter I received a lovely little maple leaf shaped bottle of Grade A Medium. It was beautiful, glowing golden, an amber beacon. I opened it and took a tiny taste. It was like edible sugar music. If molasses is a strong willed country woman maple is her dainty city cousin.

I also bring maple with me because sadly even here in New York/Vermont diners may serve the impostor-usurper: corn syrup.